


Feather Mutilation

by vyatka



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Body-focused repetitive behavior, Dermatillomania, Gen, OCD, Postpartum Depression, Self-Harm, Skin picking, author is american but says 'lads' anyway, author is projecting their own problems onto their favorite character lads, basically your standard mental illness fic, call this fic a french film bc nothing much really happens, just sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-17 20:48:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11859381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyatka/pseuds/vyatka
Summary: Captive birds are known to develop compulsive feather-plucking habits.





	Feather Mutilation

There is blood on Little Donnie’s forehead. 

Helena frowns, and wipes it away with her thumb. It can’t be his; she isn’t always watching him, not when she has his brother to keep trackings of, but she would know if he had cut his head. She is not such an inattentive mother that she would miss that. She hopes. She can already hear, in her head – 

No. There’s no wound, anyway. 

Little Arthur is stirring, close to fussing, and Helena shakes her head. This is when she sees it – more blood on Little Donnie, but it still isn’t his. It’s hers. It’s coming from her forehead. 

She makes a wordless sort of noise, reaching up to feel it. It is there, tender underneath her fingers. A clawed-open spot in her skin. It is bleeding. 

Oh – yes. 

Her heart sinks. It sinks to the bottom of her ribs (the wrong side). She has been doing picking again. 

This is the first time she has done it on her face, but not the first time she has done it. She wants to not do it, but her fingers creep. They sneak. They disobey her the way they never used to when she was an angel-of-God, and they pinch at the skin at the nape of her neck, under her hair where no one will see, and they skim over her back until they find scars and rummage in the lines – 

Little Arthur sniffs and breaks into wailing. 

For a moment, Helena presses the bloody heel of her hand into her eyes. 

Then she smiles, clucks her tongue, and reaches into his crib to hold his little baby body to her chest. He is so soft. His head smells good. Nice. So does hers, these days.

There is part of her that hates it. 

Helena is so ungrateful. She fought – she killed, which is not by itself remarkable, but she waged war, that is better, so that she could have this. This is her dream. She never wanted anything else, except before, when she was an angel, and then she only wanted to be of service to God, but that life is over, and this is the one she has now, and it is most definitely certainly the one she wants. She has no doubts. She has never sat and listened to her sons, squalling – crying – in their sacks, and thought, for one vicious moment, that she wants her freedom.

Not once. 

“Somethin’ on your face, meathead?” says Sarah when she brings Little Arthur outside, where it is pink, blue, yellow, bright from the baby shower. “You getting’ in scraps again?” 

“Oh, no,” says Helena, handing Little Arthur right over. “I scratched my face by accident.” 

A part of her that is separate from the part that hates her sweet-smelling hair desperately wants Sarah to look up and see. This was not a scratch, Sarah, she thinks, desperately. I did it. I did it with my nails, twisting and biting. 

Please notice. 

Please see. 

Sarah is never good at seeing. She bounces Little Arthur on her hip and laughs at Felix’s joke and Helena goes back inside for Little Donnie. 

***

“You notice what’s going on with Helena?” 

Cosima is leaning back, her head in Delphine’s lap. It’s a good place to be, if she does say so herself. Sarah is across from her, sunglasses slid just far enough down her nose that she looks both unbearably bored and keenly observant. 

“There’s a list,” says Sarah. “What is it this time? She’s not sick or anything?” 

“It’s, like,” Cosima begins. “Her hair. You notice what’s up with her hair?” 

“Yeah. She’s been brushin’ it.” 

Delphine. “She had it in a ponytail the other day. I thought it looked very nice.” 

“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, have you noticed how flaky it is? I thought it was really bad dandruff until this morning, but it’s not just a dry scalp. I’d know.” Cosima doesn’t know how to say it, and she can sense Sarah edging on worry, and she doesn’t want to make fuss for anyone; and, sisters or not, she doesn’t know Helena all that well. It’s probably nothing. “But there are like – strips of her skin, floating around in her hair. And it’s bloody.” 

Sarah frowns, her aloofness draining away, but before they can continue, the screen door shuts and Helena is trotting down the steps, rubbing her eyes with a sweater-pawed wrist. 

“Babies are finally in bed,” she calls, and looks up. “Little Donnie poops so much more than his brother.” 

Cosima could make a truly unfortunate joke involving Big Donnie, but she doesn’t. “Hey, pal,” she says instead. 

Helena gives her a bleary smile. “Hello.” She slumps at the base of the stairs, away from the rest of them. She scratches absently at her scalp, pulls something out of her curls, and eyes it expressionlessly before flicking it to the ground. "Everyone is well? What are you talking about?" Her teeth find her lower lip, tease at a soft little smile. "Don't leave me out of things."

Delphine kisses the corner of Cosima's mouth. Sarah groans. They're so stupidly happy.

***

It’s halfway through the night when Helena’s scars start to itch. The babies doze in their sacks, Helena is – what is the word – recumbent between them. Her breathing makes her hair puff up. 

Her back itches. 

It’s not really an itch, she thinks drowsily, because she has not yet sharpened awake. It is an urge. 

She has not cut her wings for one year. According to the internet, if she leaves them alone for many, many years, the scars could go away completely. It is a good thought. That she might one day not have any more scars. When her boys are men, her back might be bare for the first time since she was seven. 

Helena wonders if Sarah ever cut herself. She has never asked. 

Abruptly, she is awake, and sits up slow. A pure, sore arc of want pulses in her spine.

She reaches up to scratch at her neck. What she does instead is pinch between her shoulders, sharp and hard, and pull. It hurts. But it’s relief more than it’s hurt. Her hair is in the way, and she’s plucking at herself like a bird, pulling and squeezing and pinching and thinking about her razors. She runs over the keloids of her scars and tries to tear them apart.

Her nails are sharp, and ragged as her breathing, and they dig. Everything is – she’s not sure if she’s trying to get the skin off, or if she just wants to feel it rip, but she can’t stop. 

At some point, she bursts into tears. Child! Helena, always the stupid child, always crying, foolish, foolish. Her fingers are bloody, and so is her back, and – 

Arthur hiccups and begins to wail. She woke him up.

“No, no,” she tells him, rasping, unfolding her numb legs. “No, not that – hush, little one, you must stop.” 

Her back is stinging, her face and scalp are stinging, and just as she scoops Arthur into her arms, humming, Donnie rustles, sucks in a breath. (Helena is coming to dread that noise. Hate it. She doesn’t hate him at all, because she can’t, and never could. She loves them. She loves them. She loves them. She is going to raise them to speak three languages, and she will hold their hands on their first day of school, and the noise.) The noise is so loud. She’s bleeding. 

She has to leave the room. Just for a moment. Arthur, she brings. Donnie can scream by himself for a few minutes. It will not hurt him.

***

“Stop that, meathead,” says Sarah, sharply, when she catches Helena attempting to claw a hole just above her eyebrow. “S’nasty. What are you tryin’ to do, anyway, Helena? Your face is so pretty. You’re just wrecking it.” 

Alison says the same. Helena almost scowls. She catches herself. 

“We have the same face,” she says instead. “You are vain, Sarah.” 

She doesn’t know how to explain. She is nervous when she is not doing it. And when the babies cry and she thinks that she could scream, bury her face in her knees and scream until her lungs fold in and her heart-on-the-wrong-side stops beating, it is good. It is release. And it takes her mind away. 

Her lips bleed. 

Her hair is full of scabs, and it makes Alison tsk, but she is too busy with the little ones to brush it out. Her fingers hurt when they touch the baby wipes. Her back hurts. Her bones hurt, and she hasn’t even picked at them. 

Helena curls into a ball, where the sun dapples through the window and paints her yellow-gold, her bloody-bloody killer hands tucked between her knees. She blinks twice and doesn’t cry.

**Author's Note:**

> Was I happy with Orphan Black's beautiful finale? Absolutely. But do I still want to explore the idea of Helena being unhappy as a mother? Yes. And there's no better way to do that than by projecting my own mental health problems ALL OVER HER like the goblin child I am
> 
> I know this fic is pretty unoriginal and nothing actually happens, but I wrote it when I was ripping my own skin and hair off of my body like it was on fire, and it made me feel better.


End file.
